Twenty minutes ago. Outside the mansion connected to The Hive.

Umbrella had no idea what was happening within the facility. In fact, without a mean to contact the Sanitation Team(for some reason), they even have reason to believe there was an entire army of enemies within the research facility ready to break out. With this in mind, the only exit of the Hive was tightly guarded.

A twenty men division was put into a defensive formation in front of the exit of the mansion. Four snipers took four separate sniping positions that allowed them to see everything coming out of the house. The rest of the team was scattered around in groups of two, allowing them to have the maximum chance of surviving if they were attacked by weapons with area effect.

The captain of the Umbrella forces suddenly twitched as he saw the door of the house open. Two people walked out. One was a giant man carrying a menacing Gatling gun. The second was an Asian woman. She wasn’t carrying any firearm in her hands, but two pistols were in her belt and a giant rifle was on her back.

The captain frowned. He recognized them. They were two of the mercenaries sent into the Hive to investigate and neutralize the threat. The question was why were they here. Where was the rest of the team? Did they neutralize the threat?

“Men, stay alert. Rick, go to them and ask what is happening.” The captain ordered as he himself remained behind the safe cover of a black SUV. The information he was given told him the two were friends, but a gut instinct told a completely different story. Soldiers like him trusted their instincts. Rick was one of his men closest to the mansion.

The unfortunate soul stood up behind his cover and walked toward the two. He wasn’t stupid. The fact that the rest of his team was behind some sort of cover with their weapons raised meant following orders might not be the best course of action for him. Still, orders were orders. Stand up and approach, and he might live. Refuse to obey a direct order, and he might as well be dead.

Meanwhile, Ivan and Xia were having a nice, perfect, innocent conversation.

“Kill them all, right?”

“Yes.”

When Rick walked to the two, both were silently reading their weapons. The man didn’t need to use his brain to realize something was wrong, but his confidence in the sanity of the two people facing him still convinced him to hold his ground. No one would be foolish enough to attack in front of twenty men, right? They might just be readying their weapons because it was their habit to clean their arms after a battle...

He immediately realized he was the foolish one when the woman pulled out a pistol and put it to his head.

“What are you doing? We are not your enemy…” A gunshot put an end to his confusion.

The captain didn’t bother to mourn the loss of one of his men. Unlike the Sanitation Team that had trained and fought together in many battles, this team had much fewer trust and friendship between its members.

“Take them alive!” The Umbrella commanders would want to know what happened in The Hive.

One of the snipers grinned in bloodthirst. Alive didn’t mean unharmed. In fact, it didn’t even mean intact. He aimed his sniper rifle at the woman’s leg. It would be a pity for someone with such a pretty face to lose a limb, not that he cared.

The next second a gunshot pierced the air.

The sniper collapsed on the ground. A bloody hole in his left eye. A bullet just went through the sight of his sniper rifle, into his left eye, went through the brain, and came out the other end.

On the ground, Xia smirked. Trying to show off sniper skills against her...that man was very optimistic.

Maybe the sniper was well hidden, but not well hidden enough to fool Xia’s eyes.

Xia’s eyes were modified for combat. They seemed perfectly normal on the outside, but ithey were actually modified and armed with almost all the functions of the voyager goggle. For one thing, her eyes held an x-ray function that allowed her to spot all the enemies that considered themselves well covered. In fact, they were as obvious as a black circle on a white sheet of paper.

This, paired up with her modified pistols that had cheating accuracy, allowed her to kill snipers like they were nothing.

The sniper was just the first, but he would not be the last. As soon as the first shot was fired, the rest of the Umbrella forces opened fire.

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Xia and Ivan immediately took cover behind several stone pillars. Bullets flew by their ears and clashed into obstacles all around them.

Ivan licked his lips and heated up his Gatling gun. On the way here he had already inserted his voyager suit underneath his mercenary one. It made him seem larger, but its weight was nothing compared to his enhanced strength and the amount of defenses it could provide was well worth the cost. Of course, the suit protected his body, but not his head. As someone whose top priority was his own safety, there was no reason for Ivan to ignore such a glaring weakness. He put on a giant helmet which covered his entire head and left no opening for bullets to enter.

The bullets stopped for a few seconds as the soldiers realized there was very few results. The stone pillars weren’t thin enough to be taken down by a few bullets. They merely kept their weapons raised. The captain spoke an order, and two mercenaries left their cover and approached the stone pillars.

Suddenly, a giant figure leaped out into the open. The Gatling gun in his hands was pointed at the two mercenaries approaching. The man had no hesitation as he unleashed hell.

The two mercenaries barely had time to take cover before a storm of metal ripped them apart. Their kevlar did next to nothing in terms of protecting them. As soon as they were gone, the man didn’t even pause as he turned to the rest of the mercenaries who were behind various covers and continued his firing.

The mercenary captain responded quickly and tucked himself behind an SUV, which saved him from a sudden death like several of his men. The machine gun rounds washed over the defenses and took out whatever body part that wasn’t covered by something solid. A few mercenaries risked their lives and fired on Ivan, but their bullets had no effect. Some bullets actually connected and were deflected, but in the chaos of the battlefield no one saw that. As far as the captain knew, all his men missed. The few brave men were immediately taken down.

“Sniper! Kill him!” The captain knew his men were already pinned down after losing the upper hand. Anyone that tried to poke his head out would be gunned down before they could fire. Snipers were completely different. There was no way the Gatling gun could reach them.

The three snipers, previously four but lost one to Xia, focused on the giant man. One of them aimed at his head while the other two aimed at his chest. They were no longer trying to take the machine gun wearing manic alive. He had already killed several of their comrades. If they tried to take him alive only god knows how many more mercenaries would die. Umbrella high command would want to know what happened in The Hive, but their loyalty to Umbrella wasn’t high enough to convince them to risk their lives.

One of the snipers aiming at Ivan’s chest pulled the trigger. His figure shook as the penetrating round flew toward Ivan. It reached its target in less than a second.

But what the sniper expected to happen, a bloody hole in the man’s chest, was nowhere to be seen. The man merely stumbled. His armor stopped the bullet and his enhanced strength protected his intestines from being ripped apart by the impact.

All three snipers frowned. The sniper that fired reloaded and the two orders started putting pressure on their triggers. He could shrug off one bullet. Could he do the same to two? Four? Eight?

They would never find out the answer.

Suddenly, Xia poked her head out behind the cover. The pistols in her hands were replaced by a single sniper rifle. She positioned her rifle and barely aimed before firing. Three shots were done in two seconds.

The mercenary captain smirked. Sniper rifles weren’t used this way. Machine guns favored suppressing fire. Sniper rifles favored accuracy. Only fools would fire a sniper rifle like this. His smug immediately disappeared when a short groan came through the comm. He recognized it to be one of his snipers.

“Report. Report now!” He demanded futilely, but there was nothing from the snipers.

“What do we do, captain?” A soldier asked. The Gatling sound has quieted down, but none of the soldiers were naive enough to think they were safe.

“Call for reinforcements.” The captain commanded. The Umbrella commanders in Racoon City should’ve heard of all the gunshots and stuff, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

The soldier beside him nodded and took out a phone. The comm of within the team was different from the comm with Umbrella commanders. Before he could press the buttons, his head suddenly exploded.

The mercenary captain’s face turned pale as the man beside him collapsed and fell. He had seen dead people before, but the surprise of a comrade suddenly dying terribly shocked him. More importantly, how did he die? He was behind the same cover the captain was behind. The captain looked at the SUV and realized a giant hole was in the vehicle.

Xia smirked. The sniper rifle in her grip was her main weapon. Modified with nearly a hundred red crystals worth of enhancements and powered with red crystals, it could punch through a voyager battle suit with a few hits. An SUV was hardly an obstacle.

With the help of her modified vision, she started picking off the mercenaries one by one. It was a waste to spend red crystals on these ordinary human beings, but this was a necessary cost for greater profit in the future.

Sniper shots kept on echoing through the air. With every shot, one mercenary would collapse in a puddle of his own blood. Whether he was behind a stone pillar, a car, or anything else, the result would be the same. One shot. One kill. The mercenaries were dying by the seconds.

“It’s a slaughter.” A man gripped his weapon tightly and said through the comm. The weapon could no longer provide him with the safety it usually did.

“We need to move! If we stay in this position, we will die before reinforcements come!” The captain realized. “We move in three.”

“Yes sir! Ah!” The man went silent.

“Three, two, one, go!” All the mercenaries still alive jumped out of their cover. It was now or never.

The sound of Gatling gun ranged, followed by the sound of desperate screams and bodies hitting the ground.